


AELDWS 2015 drabbles

by scribblscrabbl



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Amnesia, Community: inceptiversary, Domestic, First Meetings, M/M, Mutants, Role Reversal, la belle époque, trapped together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-10 05:09:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4378436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblscrabbl/pseuds/scribblscrabbl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What it says on the tin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. don't you forget about me

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt _souvenir_.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whatever Arthur expected out of the Jakarta job, it definitely wasn't this.

“Well, aren’t you a pretty young thing,” Eames says to Arthur the first time they meet.

Five minutes ago the sky over Jakarta had unleashed a torrential downpour. Hamish is looking out the window, shuffling his feet. Marten’s throwing Eames a withering glare. And Arthur, at 22, having been a pushover most his life and hell-bent on making up for it, throws a fucking mean left hook. Which is really what it’s about, because if he’s honest with himself Eames is exactly his type – broad shoulders, big hands, and a beautiful jawline that almost makes him apologize for ruining it.

The rest of the job goes no better, and no worse. Eames watches him, tempts him, riles him with the kind of shit he’d write up as workplace sexual harassment if they were in a legitimate fucking workplace. But Eames never touches Arthur, topside or down in the dream where he’s wrapped sinuously around their mark at the poker table, looking like he was poured into his evening gown, satin lines making Arthur shake and sweat and drink too fast.

It’s when the job’s done, names in a neat little list in Marten’s hands, that Eames digs his glossy nails into Arthur’s forearm and drags Arthur into coat check without preamble. When he sinks to his knees he’s himself again, eyes hot as a brand, mouth a wicked curve, still painted red.

“Something to remember me by, darling,” he murmurs, as if it’s a palm-sized token Arthur will carry up with him and set on a shelf until it clashes with the décor.

Then Eames gets to work, and somewhere between the sight of those red lips wrapping around him and Eames swallowing him down, he hears _please_.


	2. la vie en rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Times like this Eames thinks he could get used to this life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt _negotiation_.

Every second Friday of the month they go to dinner at Cobb’s, laden with wine, casserole, and herbs they snip fresh from the garden. Eames would moan about how they’ve gone soft, predictable, _domestic_ , if he weren’t so busy falling in love with it, with seeing the children, seeing Arthur with the children, handling their moods and their exuberance with characteristic aplomb.

James was born quiet is the story. He lives in his head, eyes dark and cloaked in mystery. He’s slow to smile but when he does, he looks like a little con artist, through and through. Philippa, though, is a wild, irrepressible spirit like her mother, a hurricane that blows in and leaves you breathless. And she’s a master negotiator to boot, wearing them down until they’re not so much bargaining as they are giving up without a fight. Arthur lets her use his tie as a headband in exchange for three Brussels sprouts on her plate, which she talks down expertly to one. She agrees to share her crayons with James if Eames draws her a bouquet of sunflowers, Mal’s favorites.

But her bedtime is, by far, the easiest compromise. Every second Friday, they tuck her in at 9 and Arthur reads _Le Petit Prince_ perched on the bed, voice low and adoring. Eames, meanwhile, leans against the doorframe and watches over the little girl, falling asleep by increments to the sound of an untamed imagination whisking her far, far away.


	3. let me scratch that itch under your skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur reassures Eames he has impeccable aim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the genre sci-fi and prompt _precision_.

The firing range is where Eames finds him, lining up his shot and burying seven consecutive rounds in the target, jaw set against the recoil.

“Do you make a conscious effort to break every single rule in existence, or is it a natural ability?” Arthur asks dryly, reaching for extra eye gear and ear muffs and throwing them at Eames, who catches them against his chest.

“Conscious only when you’re around, love. Gives me a thrill, hearing you reprimand me,” Eames purrs even as he does as he’s told, human face unbearably smug.

“Don’t forget I’m armed and dangerous, Mr. Eames,” Arthur says before emptying the rest of his rounds clinically, then punching the button to bring the target into view and pulling off his protection.

“You’re always armed and dangerous,” Eames points out. “Which begs the question, why bother with a gun at all? They’re clumsy and unpredictable.”

“I like having options,” Arthur shrugs. “Hand-to-hand combat has its disadvantages.”

Eames leans forward to peer at the target. “My, my, you’ve gotten sloppy. Must be Xavier’s pacifism rubbing off on you.” 

Then he shifts without warning, skin sliding, hair fading, frame narrowing into an exquisite carbon copy of the Professor embellished with a dramatic severity that’s all Eames.

“We fight with our words not our fists,” he lectures Arthur serenely. “There is nothing that can’t be resolved with kindness and hugs and adorable puppies.”

Arthur wills his mouth not to twitch, but it doesn’t listen.

“Well, if all else failed, we’d just send you in to aggravate everyone to death,” he tells Eames, who returns to his preferred form and pouts with those goddamn _lips_. “But if you’re worried about my aim, don’t be.”

Arthur holds up a fist and lets the claws slide out, then swipes at Eames before he can blink – once, twice. When Arthur steps back, he’s left a perfect X cut into Eames’s shirt right above his heart, skin unbroken. Eames glances down at his chest and swallows.

Arthur gives him a feral grin. “With these I never miss.”


	4. little beginnings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eames amasses a collection of firsts and Arthur keeps it safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt _amnesia_.

Day 176

He teaches Eames how to make his mom’s lasagna, giving him the onions because Arthur hates chopping onions and Eames likes showing off now that it’s become muscle memory. When Arthur brings the sauce spoon to Eames’s mouth, his eyes widen, then flutter, like he’s never tasted anything so good.

Day 48

They sneak into the arboretum at night, hopping the chain-link fence by the magnolias and flopping down on the damp earth. He shows Eames the birthmarks on his arm that look like Cassiopeia, for Eames to call _wonderful_ and trace a path of discovery right over the ones that came before.

Day 395

“Is it bizarre that I envy myself?”

“For what?”

“Having kissed you hundreds of times.”

“Maybe I haven’t let you kiss me at all, have you thought about that?”

“So it’s the other way around, is it? You’ve been taking advantage of me all this time, you saucy minx.”

“Shut up and kiss me, Mr. Eames.”

Day 2

Eames beams at him from behind the bar and calls him _darling_ before asking him how he ended up in this small town looking like he has nowhere better to go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the movie 50 First Dates. Not sure that's clear at all; I had a hell of time trying to convey the idea in less than 200 words!


	5. high stakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's an old game of one-upmanship with a new set of rules.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt _role reversal_.

They do it because the job is easy bloodless money to fill the time, because they’re bored, and because neither of them has ever walked away from a little friendly competition.

“The point man and the forger. Your reputations precede you.” Their employer, a filthy rich megalomaniac who’s clearly running out of legitimate hobbies on which to waste his extravagant wealth, points at Arthur. “Arthur, right?”

“I’m Eames. The better-looking one,” Arthur says, affecting an outrageous honeyed drawl, topped off with a wink that would have Eames choking on air if he were any less of a professional.

Eames reaches a hand out to Preston, stifling the urge to pull at the ruthless half Windsor slowly strangling the life out of him, and says, voice dry as tinder, “Arthur. Why don’t we move onto something more work-appropriate?”

*

When Arthur says he can forge, he means he can bloody forge, with fucking surgical precision, and Eames wants to pin Arthur against the nearest surface with his hips and growl, _you’ve been holding out on me, darling_. Instead he returns calmly to his research, spreadsheeting the hundredth spreadsheet while contemplating a death by designer office supplies.

But the job doesn’t go off; Preston’s charged with insider trading and they go home, so Eames offers magnanimously to call it a draw.

“Nope,” Arthur says, all dimples, dropping a file into his lap. “Here’s everything you failed to dig up on our mark. You’re stuck being Chewbacca to James’s Hans Solo next Halloween. Sucker.”


	6. you want to start a revolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arthur's never been extravagant with his investments, but there's a first time for everything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the genre historical AU and the prompt _opportunity_.

They meet at the Moulin Rouge in a discreet corner away from the cacophony of the stage, teeming with upturned skirts and bared skin – the shrill exuberance of a Paris reinvented, reinvigorated. Glowing spheres of lights cascade like cheap pearls from the ceiling. The air is smoky, cloying, redolent with excess.

Arthur drags out a chair, temples already pounding.

“Yusuf has been singing your praises. I can hardly get him to shut up.” Arthur studies his friend’s latest find – late 20s, unshaven, thick shoulders, casually dressed as if to thumb his nose at the Establishment, looking more like a farm hand than an artist.

Eames leans forward, wearing the kind of smile that’s no doubt done him numerous favors, but his art, probably not so much.

“The man does have remarkable taste,” he murmurs, eyes sweeping the length of Arthur, from mouth to chest.

Arthur’s hand twitches against the tablecloth. “And my time is remarkably valuable, Mr. Eames. Do you have the painting or not?”

Eames sits back, then nods at the foot of his chair. A canvas is propped against it, wrapped in cloth, small enough to fit on the table.

“Henri tells me it’s not my best, but I’ve learned artists love giving each other terrible advice.”

“What kind of financial support do you – ” Arthur stops abruptly when he pulls off the fabric to reveal – a revelation. A thousand words daring Tolstoy, Valéry to do better. Asymmetrical cliffs plunging down to seething waters and rising up to an otherworldly sky. A coalescence of brazen color and fantastical geometry proclaiming, without a single inhibition, the death of Impressionism. “How many more do you have?”

“Dozens,” Eames says, startled. “And dozens more unfinished.”

This time Arthur smiles. “I’ll buy them. All of them.”


	7. revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Desperate times call for creative measures.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt _trapped together_.

It’s the last time Arthur will ever take a job in Quebec. 

That is, if he ever gets the fuck out of Quebec, seeing as they’re snowed in by a freak storm raising hell outside their cabin. Ariadne, delayed out of de Gaulle, is spared, which means it’s him, and it’s Eames, who can’t stop running his goddamn mouth, can’t stop pestering Arthur about everything from the draft seeping through the windows to his favorite yoga pose.

So he decides the most effective way to shut Eames up is to say, “Do you wanna fuck?”

In retrospect, he’s not sure what he expected, but it wasn’t Eames swallowing, eyes heating, ratcheting up the room temperature by dangerous degrees. It wasn’t Eames stroking his wrists while bruising his mouth, tonguing his split lip, making him arch and groan and fucking _want_. 

“Asshole, you made me bleed,” he hisses, and it still sounds like he’s begging for it.

Then Eames is peeling him out of his clothes, lips parted, greedy over his cock, dragging blunt nails down his thighs and pushing a fever into him that burns him through while murmuring, “I’ve wanted to wreck you from the day we met.”


End file.
